Ontario Grade 10 Literacy Test An Exercise in Indoctrination

As practice for my son's upcoming Ontario Secondary School literacy test, an Ontario Ministry of Education requirement for Grade 10 pupils, he and his classmates were provided with last year's test. Here are a couple of questions from it (and, no, I'm not making this up):

• Identify an environmental issue. Use specific details to explain why it is important.
• Read the section below and answer the questions that follow it. Polar bear survival in the wild may be in danger because of climate change. Climate change is lengthening the ice-free period in southwestern Hudson Bay and thus the polar bear fast...

Maybe the fasting polar bear should move down south. Last night's temperature in Toronto, for instance, was a balmy 31 below zero with the wind chill.

Also, last time I checked the plural of polar bear was polar bears.

Rather disconcerting to find such a glaring error in a literacy test, no?